A new survey of American moms has discovered that making school lunches for the clamoring parasites that we politely call "children" can be a real pain in the ass, which is why it seems that more American dads are using their American fingers to help spread some American peanut butter over some American sliced bread every morning before school.

Fifty-five percent of moms with school-age kids says the very idea of making lunches for their little fledglings gives them night terrors, but a survey for Coupons.com found that dads were more than willing to help make whatever meal their kids would take to the cafeteria marketplace to try and barter for something better, like Zebra Cakes or a Fruit by the Foot. According to the Coupons.com survey, fifty-five percent of dads said they made lunch for their kids, compared with only forty-three percent of moms. However, less than half of parents actually made lunches more than three times a week — usually they just shoved Lunchables in a plastic shopping bag and sent their kids merrily to school, where their peers could envy their pizza crackers and Capri Sun pouches (younger parents, however, tended to make lunches from scratch).

To help ease the burden of preparing school lunches, household savings expert Jeanette Pavini paradoxically suggests that parents stop relying on pre-packaged lunches, and instead do things to save money, such as scraping together all the cereal box leavings and Halloween leftover M & Ms to create some homemade trail mix as a "treat," even though what it will actually be is the macadam with which parents will pave their children's embarrassing paths through the grade school social hierarchy.